Technicolor

Conley WoodsWednesday, December 05, 2012

ast week, I wrote about a deck I played in Grand Prix San Antonio that was a solid four colors. At the time, I thought I was pushing the boundaries on what mana bases in Standard could look like. Even at four colors, with one being a splash, I found myself running into occasional mana issues. You can imagine, then, what it would take to get a five-color mana base working! Ali Aintrazi managed just that, though, and saw it piloted by Mark Nestico to a Top 8 finish in the TCGPlayer 5k in Indianapolis.

But with a free rein on mana, what do we want to be doing with our spell suite? Theoretically, we have access to anything and everything, so how do we give our deck definition and identity? Ali chose to run a control deck, as it better fits the mana fixing and acceleration of the deck. An aggro deck wants to deploy as many threats as possible quickly—something that awkward early mana prevents. With awkward early mana and great late-game mana, cards like Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Sphinx's Revelation are quite appealing. While the exact spells can certainly shift around, the notion of a control deck is a solid one that Ali picked up on.